1980s

Films from the 1980s

The Blue Lagoon

By / / 1980, 1980s, Re-Released Review / Leave a Comment

Originally published: Sept. 2, 1980

Every year, it seems, a movie is released that should never have been made.

Now Showing

Where to watch: Just Watch

Last year, it was The Amityville Horror; the year before, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. This year, it’s Columbia’s remake of The Blue Lagoon.

The Blue Lagoon is totally useless. The plot (what little there is) muddles along at a pitifully slow pace. Too much time is spent on Wild Kingdom-like scenery. We see chirping birds, slithering snakes, swimming squids, and turned-on turtles. Basically what you might see on the television show.

The Blue Lagoon ends up about one-and-a-quarter hours too long. It moves along fairly well at the very beginning and at the very end, but in between, the story pokes along unmercifully.

Though the plot touches on some philosophical views of religion, it simply mentions them with no attempt made to explore them.

The Blue LagoonPlease click to continue reading…

Chameleon Street

By / / 1980s, 1989 / Leave a Comment

This week’s pick for our Criterion film club was Chameleon Street, a 1989 independent film about an imposter who poses as a reporter, a doctor, and a lawyer, among other roles.

Now Showing

Chameleon Street

Where to watch: Just Watch

I thought this would be a film like Catch Me If You Can, the 2002 film about con artist Frank Abagnale Jr., or similar films. But that was completely wrong.

Wendell B. Harris Jr. wrote, directed, and starred in Chameleon Street, his first — and as of now his only — feature film. It’s an impressive debut. But everyone in the club was surprised that Harris hadn’t been able to turn it into a thriving film career, either as an actor, voice actor, or filmmaker.

The film is based on real-life con artist William Douglas Street Jr., with a bit of Erik Dupin mixed in. It’s so much more than just a con artist film.

Chameleon StreetPlease click to continue reading…

Smokey and the Bandit II

By / / 1980, 1980s, Re-Released Review / Leave a Comment

Originally published: Sept. 2, 1980

Movie sequels (or remakes of old movies) are swiftly joining death and taxes as an inevitable and not always pleasant) part of American life. The latest entry in the sequel sweepstakes is Smokey and the Bandit II (or The Sheriff Strikes Back), starring Burt Reynolds, Sally Field, Jerry Reed, Jackie Gleason, and Dom DeLuise.

Now Showing

Smokey and the Bandit II

Where to watch: Just Watch

SATB II picks up about year after Smokey and Bandit. Bandit (Reynolds) has been driven to drink by the break-up with Frog (Field), who has gone back to Texas to marry son of Sheriff Buford T. Justice. The old team is brought back together when Snowman (Jerry Reed) is offered $400,000 to transport a pregnant elephant from Miami to Dallas in four days.

The film is pretty familiar Burt Reynolds’ fare, i.e. lots of car chases, gorgeous girls, and good one-liners. Reynolds, Field, and Reed work together well as always, and DeLuise is an excellent addition to the troupe. Gleason isn’t quite as high-handed in his role of Sheriff Justice in this film but makes up for it somewhat by playing a triple role (Justice and his brothers, Reginald of the Mounties and Gaylord of the Texas Highway Patrol).

Smokey and the Bandit IIPlease click to continue reading…

Body Heat

By / / 1980s, 1981 / Leave a Comment

Like a lot of the country, we’ve been having a heat wave in Florida. Temperatures last month were over 100, matching the daily record one day where I live.

Now Showing

Where to watch: Just Watch

There’s also a heat wave — in more ways than one — in 1981’s Body Heat, our club’s pick for the week.

Several weeks ago, we discussed how the rain was a character in its own right in The Hole. From the opening scene (which reminded me of the opening of Psycho, set in a hot Phoenix) to the final one, the heat is equally ever-present.

You can almost feel the heat just watching, thanks to writer/director Lawrence Kasdan. The characters talk about it, their clothing shows the sweat, and the movie uses a very warm color palette.

Body HeatPlease click to continue reading…

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

By / / 1980s, 1986, Re-Released Review / Leave a Comment

Originally published: June 14, 1986

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off may turn out to be the hit of the summer.

From when the alarm clock wakes Ferris up on his “day off” until after the last closing credit, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off proves to be the funniest movie since 1984’s Ghostbusters.

Now Showing

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

Where to watch: Just Watch

Matthew Broderick (who you may remember from WarGames and Ladyhawke) plays Ferris Bueller, a high-school senior who appears to be majoring in cunning, persuasion, and charm rather than the usual college-prep courses. With only weeks left before graduation, Bueller decides to play sick and enjoy a holiday.

After successfully faking off his parents (explaining how to do just that in an aside to the audience), Bueller wrangles away two friends (played by Mia Sara and Alan Ruck) from their suburban Chicago school and sets off for a day in the big city. They visit the Chicago stock exchange, a Cubs baseball game, a posh restaurant, a German heritage parade, and the Chicago Museum of Art.

Lots of fun and no problems, right? Fun, yes. No problems, no.

Ferris Bueller’s Day OffPlease click to continue reading…

Five Corners

By / / 1980s, 1987 / Leave a Comment

Despite going to the cinema two, sometimes three, times a week in the 1980s, I have no recollection of Five Corners.

Now Showing

Five Corners

Where to watch: Just Watch

The 1987 film, which stars Jodie Foster, Tim Robbins, John Turturro, and Todd Graff, spans roughly two days around a few blocks in the Bronx in 1964.

It’s a curious film. Directed by Tony Bill, Five Corners is set in a stylized New York populated by quirky, yet stereotypical, characters. It’s humorous one minute and dark the next — as well as darkly humorous at times.

Turturro is particularly outstanding as the sociopathic Heinz, who’s just gotten out of prison for the attempted rape of Linda (Foster) and returned to the neighborhood still obsessed with her. He’s backed by solid performances by Foster, Graff (who plays her boyfriend, Jamie), and Robbins (her pacifist protector, Harry).

Five CornersPlease click to continue reading…

Cobra

By / / 1980s, 1986 / Leave a Comment

Originally published: June 14, 1986

In Cobra, Sylvester Stallone stoops to a new, silly low.

It was bad enough having a semi-coherent Rambo roaming the screens, but now we’ve got Marlon Cobretti, a.k.a. “Cobra,” who speaks even less and when he does it’s just stupid

Now Showing

Cobra

Where to watch: Just Watch

Example: In the first sequence of the film, Cobra confronts a crazed gunman who threatens to blow up a supermarket, along with its shoppers. Cobra responds, “Go ahead. I don’t shop here,” in his best deadpan, growling voice. Then rumbles, “You’re a disease, and I’m the cure.”

Fine.

If that’s not enough. Cobra’s out to wipe off the map a legion of axe-clanking slashers who want to create their own society. Conveniently, Cobra’s police bosses won’t believe the legion exists, and Cobra doesn’t have the smarts to prove it exists without slaughtering the whole gang and destroying a large part of a small town in doing so.

CobraPlease click to continue reading…

Blue Velvet

By / / 1980s, 1986 / Leave a Comment

In David Lynch‘s eye, normalcy is a thin veneer on reality. A smiling firefighter waving from the side of a red firetruck. The green yard between the white picket fence and the middle-America house in a quiet neighborhood.

Now Showing

Blue Velvet

Where to watch: Just Watch

Move the camera in closer to that little crack in the veneer — closer and closer still — and you see the dark rot of reality, such as early in Blue Velvet when Mr. Beaumont (Jack Harvey) has a seizure and falls to the ground as he’s watering the lawn. While the dog snaps at the stream of water shooting from the hose in Mr. Beaumont’s hand, Lynch’s camera looks to the right and moves toward the lawn, then closer to the blades of grass, then between them to the earth that teems with loudly munching beetles.

I saw Blue Velvet — this week’s club pick — when it first came out 35 years ago, and haven’t rewatched it in its entirety until now. I remembered the premise and a few key scenes, so it was almost like watching it for the first time.

Blue VelvetPlease click to continue reading…

Blood Simple

By / / 1980, 1980s / Leave a Comment

I first saw Blood Simple, not at the theater, but on a 27-inch color TV from a VHS tape that I’d rented. After watching Raising Arizona, I wanted to check out Joel and Ethan Coen’s first film (and back then, that was the way to do it).

Now Showing

Blood Simple

Where to watch: Just Watch

At first, it’s a textbook film-noir plot: A Texas bar owner (Dan Hedaya) hires a private detective (M. Emmet Walsh) to kill his wife (Frances McDormand) and the bartender (John Getz) she’s been stepping out with. But, it’s not as simple as that, of course.

I understood the term “blood-simple,” as used by the Continental Op in Dashiell Hammett’s fix-up novel Red Harvest, to mean a craziness, not necessarily limited to one person, where they think that killing is the easiest way to get what they want, without thinking of the ramifications to themselves or anyone else.

Toss in the fact that it’s not easy to kill someone as you think, and that you may not be seeing the whole picture, and it makes “blood-simple” much more complex.

Blood SimplePlease click to continue reading…

Cheech and Chong’s Next Movie

By / / 1980, 1980s, Re-Released Review / Leave a Comment

Originally published: Sept. 5, 1980

Univeral’s Cheech and Chong’s Next Movie proves that in the 1980s the outrageous 1960s humor still exists, somewhere, and is still funny.

Neither Richard “Cheech” Marin nor Tommy Chong has outgrown the “head” image; instead they have adapted it to the ’80s.

Now Showing

Cheech and Chong's Next Movie

Where to watch: Just Watch

The Cheech and Chong of the early ’70s was a parody of the hippies. Today, they portray an anachronism of two people out of place in this day and age.

A holdover from the hippy era is Cheech and Chong’s fixation on filth. With the media blaring bath and soap (“Keep yourself clean with—”; you know the type) commercials few of us even consider keeping used underclothes in the refrigerator so they won’t spoil.

The movie consists of sketches linked by a semblance of a plot. But instead of being boring, the film hits you with one comedy gag after another — Bang! Bang! Bang! It’s one of the few movies with almost no plot that is worth seeing.

Cheech and Chong’s Next MoviePlease click to continue reading…